The State We're In: Maine Stories by Ann Beattie Read Free Book Online

black half circle below them, which he’d been kind enough not to mention. It got there because my husband, who drank, took a fall one night and went over backward, the rubber sole of his shoe scraping a near-perfect arc underneath the prints. The fall didn’t kill him, though driving into a tree did. Anyway, I told my visitor about the mark on the wall before we got to the landing. I had him precede me because I don’t bound up the stairs anymore. “But you do use your room regularly,” he said. I thought he was perhaps speaking sympathetically, cuing me. I used it every day, so agreeing was only telling the truth.
    He saw that the door was on the hinges. That even the small closet held typing paper and a file drawer filled with rough drafts, not clothes. He admired the rug, which pleased me. He seemed like a genuine person, if you know what I mean. Yancey clicked along beside us, with her long toenails that the vet kept urging me to let her cut, though I know Yancey hates it so much, I’ve demurred. The IRS man said that his wife had a poodle that had been run over by a truck. Whether it was a standard poodle or one of those little things, he didn’t say. I told him I was sorry and waited for a signal we might leave the room. He took a few steps forward and looked out the window. Below, the white lilacs were blooming. He said, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d!” It crossed my mind that he might be testing. Of course I knew who wrote the poem. I wasn’t, for example, pretending that my husband’s office was mine, to continue to take the deduction after his death. So I said the poet’s name. Then we stood there a bit longer.
    “You know, this is a peaceful, functional room,” he said. “More people should have a sanctuary like this. It must bring you pleasure to walk into this room.”
    I’d been warned by the accountant to volunteer as little as possible, so I just said, “Yes, it does.”
    “Not even a desk phone. A room for uninterrupted time.”
    I nodded. That was entirely right. There was a phone in the kitchen and an extension phone in the bedroom that Étienne called an “antique.” She’d told me more than once that if I wanted to get a new phone, she could get good money for my pale blue Princess phone on eBay. I’m not rich, but I don’t have to sell every small thing I have. I give most of it away, or put a few things in my nice young neighbor’s July tag sale. That was not the issue, though. My extension phone was perfectly fine.
    “I see that it’s your office,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s certainly just as you said it was. I hope you’re getting good writing done in here. I know you’ve had quite a few poems published in recent years. My daughter is at Sarah Lawrence, and she’s explained to me that poetry writing doesn’t bring in much income. Totally separate from knowing about my seeing you today, I mean. She wants to be a playwright.”
    “I think that would be very interesting,” I said sincerely. I tried not to miss any production that wasn’t a musical at Hackmatack Playhouse, in North Berwick. Musicals I can do without. In the evening, I often listen to classical music in the living room. Yancey is soothed by it. Really, nothing is so lovely as a quietly snoring dog and some evening Brahms, as you sit in a comfortably overstuffed chair with your feet on the footstool.
    “My house looks like a tornado hit it!” he said. “Your husband drank? My wife drinks. Our daughter could have had a very good scholarship at a nearby college, but she insisted on going away, and I knew exactly why. Last year when I had my appendix out, my wife forgot to pick me up when I was discharged. I had to get a cab home. And do you know what she was doing, that she’d lost track of time? She was having a gin and tonic in the middle of the afternoon, painting our daughter’s bedroom bright yellow, to make it ‘cheerful.’ She just painted whatever area of the wall was